The Top 3 Reasons to Attend BlogWorld New York [VIDEO]

BlogWorld is a must-attend social media event, hosting thousands of attendees from 50+ countries, with more than 200 speakers. There will be 3 days of cutting-edge conference sessions and eye-opening keynotes, a thriving tradeshow and great networking events, bringing the global community of content creators and publishers together all under one roof.

Arnie Kuenn speaks with Deborah Ng about the top three reasons to attend BlogWorld & New Media Expo being held in New York City June 5-7, 2012.

Transcription

Arnie: Welcome, everybody. Today our guest is Deborah Ng. She’s the Director of Community for BlogWorld. We’re going to talk a little about the upcoming event which in New York City in June… you really need to know. I don’t really need to know, but you should know.

Deborah: Yeah, it’s important I show up on the right day.

Arnie: She’s also the author of “Social Media Marketing All-in-One for Dummies.” We’ll talk about that in a little bit. I wanted to invite Deb to do this video to talk about the top three reasons to attend BlogWorld. Deb, I’ll let you take it from here and talk to the audience.

Deborah: Absolutely. There are actually a lot of reasons why one would attend BlogWorld. I don’t know if Hangout gives us that amount of time that it would take for me to tell you all about it but I’ll run it down by what for me were the three most important reasons. Before I was BlogWorld’s Director of Community, and before I was BlogWorld’s Conference Director, I was a BlogWorld attendee. I came on my own as someone who owned a blog network. I just had something to learn. I have all of these different reasons beyond my working for BlogWorld to want to come.

For me, the number one reason to attend BlogWorld is the education. We take that very seriously to set us apart from some of the other conferences out there. We look for the best speakers possible. When I say the best speakers possible, I don’t talk about names because you can go anywhere and see the names. We don’t want you to come for the names. We want people to come because they’re going to learn and our speakers are the best at what they do.

We don’t often look for names. We look for people who maybe aren’t as well-known but are super smart. We’d rather give an opportunity to an up-and-comer than somebody who speaks at every conference. Education is the number one reason to attend BlogWorld.

Next in line … even out on the front steps, because even smokers network, Arnie. We offer the best networking. There are just so many people to meet. Not everybody comes for the educational sessions, which is fine, but they do come to make important connections. You’re going to find them at BlogWorld.

And finally, for me the most important reason to come is the opportunities. You can land book deals there, you can meet potential clients, you can meet collaborators. People have landed jobs at BlogWorld. People have made the evening news. We’ve had the Today Show there. We’ve had CNN there. Some people became well-known after appearing at BlogWorld. You build up your personal connections, your professional connections, and we’re co-located with Book Expo which means you’ll be hobnobbing with authors and publishers.

Arnie: Give us an idea of the size and scope of BlogWorld. You do it twice a year but I think it’s become bigger and bigger every year.

Deborah: We do it twice a year, although this year we only have one conference in New York. We don’t have an L.A. event this year. We’re going to be in Las Vegas in January. We’re going to be happening around the same time as CES, so people who have to choose between CES or us can come at the same time and charge one flight.

We only have one conference this year. We actually narrowed down the amount of educational sessions we’re offering. In Los Angeles last year, we had around 22 concurrent sessions and we decided that’s too much. There’s too much to do. And then … WebTV, content creation, community. We have the Social Media Business Summit, which is a separate mini-conference inside our conference for businesses learning to use social media. I think we’re hoping for over 3000 attendees in New York City this year.

Arnie: That’s huge. Good job building it up.

Deborah: Thank you.

Arnie: Before we wrap it up, I wanted to ask you about your book. How it’s doing, and I’ll give you a chance to plug it.

Deborah: Thank you. Actually, I’m still co-authoring. I’m in the middle of writing the second edition of “Social Media Marketing All-In-One for Dummies” with Jan Zimmerman. My book, “Online Community Management for Dummies” is the one that just came out and it’s doing pretty good. If the last numbers I saw were correct, then I’m pretty pleased. It’s been a lot of fun.

Arnie: … fun to write.

Deborah: Before I did all this, Arnie, I was a writer. I freelanced as a writer and my background is in publishing so it’s bringing me back to my passion.

Arnie: I would not consider myself a writer and I would never say writing the book I wrote was fun. It was a labor of love, as they say.

Deborah: And that’s what counts, the love part.

Arnie: Exactly. That’s all the time we’re going to have at this session. I want to thank Deb for joining us, and for all of you who can make it to BlogWorld New York, June 5th through 7th, I highly recommend it. Again, thank you, Deborah, for your time.It was good talking to you.